Archive for October, 2011

So a lot of the time I spend online, I see newer players coming into the SN public chat looking for advice on how to start up with doing ninja salvage.

MLYT has hosted many guides, on how to scan, find a system, and more. These guides are great, but they get outdated, and they’re all separate.

I set out with this in mind to produce a sort of all inclusive guide to ninja salvaging, showing beginners to the trade exactly what they’ll need to get themselves started, as well as demonstrate how easy and quickly you can get into it.

In the video embedded below, I discuss what ship to scan and loot with, how to fit them, how to scan, and how to go about ninja salvaging someone’s wrecks. The main purpose for this guide is to be a complete tool to link to people who ask questions, so I can give them good visual advice, rather than have to repeat the same few hours over for each person one on one.

Feedback is always good, but if you comment to say something like “X fit is better cause I do this with it”, then the door is over there ->

This video is intended to give the newest of players the absolute cheapest and easiest way to get started in the trade, and as such makes use of very cheap modules and ships. Yes, you will upgrade, but this is meant as a starting point.

Some folks have asked why I’m joining in the Goonswarm gank-fest on ice miners in Gallente space. After all, I’m not profiting personally from Goons takeover of the market, or of their ship-reinbursment program. I’ll tell you why: It’s fun! Today you can fly into an ice belt in a Velator, lock up an Orca, and the whole belt full of miners will warp away. It’s priceless.

Some brave/clueless/stupid miners (and bots) are still trying to collect Blue Ice. Is it worth it? Let’s find out!

Punching the numbers, we come up with 50,600 ISK for Heavy Water; 437,800 ISK for Liquid Ozone; 16.07M for Oxy Topes; and 22,880 ISK for Stront. Call it 16.5M/hour. A Mack hull is going for 140M. If you can manage to survive ice mining in Gallente space for 8.5 hours, you’ll come out ahead even if you lose your Mack. Of course, I’m not counting the module costs or rig costs either.

I’m not sure any one is surviving more than four or five hours at a time right now. If you’re using a Hulk the numbers are even worse; a Hulk only returns 36 units per hour and costs 200M. At that point you’ll have to mine for close to 15 hours to survive loss of a Hulk.

Meanwhile lots of hilarity is to be found by people still trying to ice mine. Miners are using super-tanked Hulks and Mackinaw, remote repair, and even Orca-swapping. Good laughs are to be found when you can kill one of these guys. I suggest an alpha-strike fit Tempest or Malestrom.

Khalia and I spend most of our spaceship time with a Skype call going between us these days. Some time ago I started recording these conversations and lifting out the amusing parts, with the intention of turning into a very-not-srs-business podcast where we discuss everything, Even Eve.

This is the first episode. You may or may not like it. We didn’t work very hard on it. New episodes will be released when they’re released, not on a set schedule.

Since I have an alt that is a highly skilled Basilisk pilot he was my guy to use; Khalia is unfortunately blacklisted =)

I got a decent fit, headed off to Amarr where the current highsec incursions are, and started broadcoasting my request for a fleet invite in the well-known ‘BTL Pub’ channel. Got picked up pretty quickly to run Vanguard sites. I had done logistic chains before in PvP, so this was fairly straight forward.

Income on a ten man fleet (2-3 logistics, rest DPS/webs/painters) runs 10.5m per site plus 1500 LP. These sites can be done in about 5-10 minutes. My first FC was decent, and we got into a nice rhythm. After an hour or so, he left and made me FC.

As Paul said to me “the essence of leadership is delegation”. So I found someone in my fleet who knew these sites to tag, and I started furiously reading site guides while making sure reps kept up on people. And it worked! We did a few sites before I passed the ball onto someone else.

Later I was picked up into a larger 30 man fleet running a Headquarters site. This was not quite as fun, as getting 30 people all in the same place at the same time and listening consistently to orders is way harder than 10 people. Not a linear scale at all. Our site took about 30 minutes and paid out around 30.5m plus 7k LP.

Second night, I got into a pickup fleet with an excellent FC and a great group of players. This FC really knew his shit and we blitzed through about 20 Vanguard sites in a few hours; I made about 200m plus a lot of LP. This was a lot of fun, and the 10-man fast blitz is definitely the way to go. Catching other fleets at a gate and racing to complete a site against them was enjoyable.

Final fleet before this post was a 22-man fleet running a Nation Commander Stronghold site with five logistics. This fleet took a long time to form up, a long time for everyone to get together, and about 20 minutes to run the site, for a 18.2m payout… and then a break. A number of people new to Incursions complicated matters, and a Machariel panicked on low shields and shot a fleet member; CONCORDOKEN and ragequit resulted.

Summary: Incursions are great ISK. Incursions are fun, IF you get a competent FC and play with a small group who have some experience and understand each other well.